Mod incompatibilities, dependencies and possibly even manually installing mods.
I propose to include some form of dependency handling in the new format, similar to .deb packages.
To sum things up, modders could put things like "requires Better Bodies", "conflicts with Fashionable Merchants <1.0" or "recommends Vurt's Trees" directly into their mod files, thus taking out the hassle of having to manage mod compatibility yourself.
If we take this thought even further, we could even create a package manager and set up repositories, so that users just need to do the equivalent of apt-get to install the mods they want and to keep them up-to-date. This would also make modpacks like Morrowind 2011 easier, as modpack creators wouldn't be required to actually redistribute the mods of others, thus skipping the whole licensing issue.
Instead of making one huge modpack to download, they could just make metapackages that basically tell the package manager which mods to install.
Installing the latest and greatest graphics mods could be as easy as
Code: Select all
apt-get install mots-graphics-pack
Now i know that the last paragraph is not exactly the scope of the openmw project, this would need to be created separately. However, if we need to create a new format, why not make one that could potentially make things like this possible?